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DELTTEEEB AT THE — 



Re-uxiox Coxvextiox 



— -or THE- 



iJld Abolitionists of Easteni Ohio and West- 
era Peuiisylvania, 

AT AT.T. TA XCE. OHIO, 

— ET — 

A. B. BRADFORD, 

OF ES03k TAiX^EY. PA. 



±^±a-0>.' < COPPEPJPLATE PREST. 

Ai_LlAV':E. OHIO. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 

At.liance, Ohio, October 2, 1879. 
Dear Mr. Bradford.— Believing that the vindication of the Old Aboli- 
tionists in your address before the Reunion Convention yesterday was a just 
tribute to tiie work and worth of these men and women; and believing also 
that your representation of the position and character of the American 
Churcli, during the Anti-Slavery struggle, was entirely correct, we resp ct- 
fuUy request you to comply with the expressed wish of tlie Convention and 
fu rnisli a copy of it for publication. JOHN GORDON, 

MARGARET HISE, 
R. C. FLOWER, 
I. SEARLES, 
JOHN S. HUNTER, 
DAVID EDGAR, 
ANN CLARK, 
WM. WATSON. 

At.liance, Ohio, Octobers, 1879. 
To John Gordon, M. Hise, and others : 

Your note of yesterday approving of my vindication of the Old Abolition- 
ist.s is received; and to bring it before the eye of many who were not present 
at the Reunion, I cordially comply with your request. 

With sincere respect, I am yours, A. B. BRADFORD. 



[Copiesof this Address may be had at the expense of a one cent postage- 
stamped envelope each, by sending to A. H. Kendall, Secretary of the Con- 
vention, Alliance, Ohio, or to Mr. Bradford, Enon Valley, Pa.] 



CO 






ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 



:o:- 



Comradesof the Old Forlorn Hope: 

That the audience may see the appropriateness of this mil- 
itary term as applied to the Abolitionists of 1830, let us go 
back to those times which we old men have good cause to re- 
member, but which you young men know nothing about, ex- 
cejDt by the hearing of the ear; when the Institution of Amer- 
ican Slavery ruled the Nation with a rod of iron; and w^hen 
the moral darkness that brooded over the land was like the 
darkness of Egypt that could be felt. 

The crime of slavery consisted in the fact, that irrespective 
of color or blood, upon the legal principle ^^ partus sequitur 
ventrem " — the child follows the condition of the mother — it 
converted millions of the American people into chattels per- 
sonal to be bought, sold, or inherited as j^^operty. The out- 
rage it inflicted on huraanit}^ was as great as the insult it of- 
fered to God who is the Father of us all. The National Con- 
stitution limited the slave trade on the coast of Africa to the 
3^ear 1808, but the Inter-State slave trade was not prohibited, 
and men, women and children, of all ages and complexions, 
being in law only property, were exposed in the market- 
place to all the incidents of property. Michael Eeece, who 
died in California last year worth thirteen millions, began his 
fortune by keeping three slave shambles in as many South- 
ern cities — Washington, Baltimore and Kichmond, where he 
traded in the flesh ol Christians as the Christians had traded 
in the flesh of his Jewish ancestors centuries ago, and where 
his odious traffic was advertised in all the leading papers of 
those cities. Loving each other with all the tenderness we 
feel towards our relatives, the sufterings of the slaves all over 
the South were inexpressibly great. My heart aches even 
now when I remember the scenes which I myself have wit- 
nessed, but I never saw the one-millionth part of the agony 
which was endured by the enslaved race. The Slave Power, 
embodied in the persons of not more than a quarter of a mil- 
lion of Slaveholders, all told, exercised absolute control over 



4 ADDRESS TO OLD AEOLTTIONISTS. 

tlic Nation in botli IlonBcs of Coiigress, shaped its foreign and 
domestic l)olicy, subordinated the Snjjremc Court itself, 
and made the President its willing tool in carrying out its 
plans. It reached the acme of its diabolism when, as one of 
the compromise measures of 1850, it enacted the '^Fugitive 
.Slave Law." Up to this period the southern slaves alone 
were its victims; but this law made it a penitentiary offence 
in a northern man to aid or abet intlie escape of a slave from 
his master. Worse than that, it converted ua all, North and 
South indiscriminately, into two-legged blood hounds to go, 
at the word of the slaveholder, and chase down a fugitive 
slave, and return him to his bondage, or to submit to fine and 
imprisonment. Mr. Mason, of Virginia, wdio originated the 
Bill in Congress, declared that his mam purpose was to hu- 
miliate the abolitionists by compelling them to do this menial 
service to the slaveholding aristocracy or go to jail. 

Except the Quakers, and the Covenanters wdio w^ero re- 
markable tor the smallness of their numbers, all the churches 
of the country, Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Meth- 
odists, Baptists, Congregationalists and every other sect, were 
on the side of the slaveholders, their members practicing and 
their clergy defending the system by appeals to the Bible. It 
was at such a time as this, and under such circumstances, that 
the Abolitionists arose under the leadership of Wm. Lloyd 
Garrison, and took the startling position that slaver}^ was in 
itself a sin against Cod, and a crime against man, and that it 
should be immediately abolished. If in war those soldiers Avho 
volunteer to go out on some desperate enterprise against the 
enemy, or make the first onset in a pitched battle, are called 
the ''Forlorn Hope" I leave it to you to say whether I have 
not appropriately called the Abolitionists of 1830 by that 
name. I'o declare war against the Laws and public senti- 
ment, and to fight against the organized forces of the church 
which had the ear of the people, and which hurled their an- 
athemas against them from thousands of pulpits every Sun- 
diiy. Who could engage in so hazardous an enterprise but 
men who, in the discharge of their duty, did not know what 
fear_ was ? But they knew what they were about. They or- 
ganized societies, established newspapers, and sent out lectur- 
ers all over the country to proclaim to their' countrymen 
these great revolutionary truths. In the war they declared 
against slavery they repudiated the use of carnal weapons, and 
depended alone for success on the sharp edge of the truths they 
enunciated. Of course they were like an' hundred head of 



ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 5 

sheep turned loose anioni^ ten thousand raveninir wolves 
Jl-very politician and churchman felt at liberty to slander 
them, and when opportunity offered, to abuse them personally 
so that they became the offscouring of all things. They 
were charged with intending to get up another St. Doming-o 
massacre m all the Southern States; and the Legislature of 
Georgia offered $5,000 for the head of Garrison dead or alive. 
Ihe Church, professing and claiming to be the "Lii>:ht of 
the world, and the Salt of the Earth," and the divine fnstru- 
mentaiity for reforming mankind, and so regarded by th'e 
people generally, the Abolitionists called upon her in all her 
denominations to take the lead in the great reform they in- 
augurated. But the Church was given over to a religion of 
dogmas and ceremonies, and instead of leading, she opposed 
them witli the most unscrupulous and cruel ^denunciations 
in the year 1818 the Presbyterian Church, then the most in- 
fluential of all the Protestant sects, had declared that slave- 
lioldmg was a breach of every precept of the Decalogue, and a 
vioiationof every principle of the Gospel of Christ, the sum 
total of ad possible villainies. But that was before the inven- 
tion of the cotton gin, and when human bondage was a mere 
..brahamic Institution. In 1845.however,when Cotton had be- 
come K Dig, and when able-bodied negroes were worth a thou- 
sand dollars a head in the Pichmond and New Orleans market 
and when women were unblushingly advertised and sold as 
good breeders of slave stock, the Church, having no settled- 
standard ot right and wrong, repudiated her former testimon- 
ies, and declared to the world that slavery was a divine insti- 
tution, and that to say it was not, as the Abolitionists did, 
was a slander upon Christ and his Apostles. The Church 
made much of marriage; but here were millions of men and 
women, who, being slaves, were denied the relations of hus- 
bands and wives, parents and children, and were compelled 
by law to live in what the same law declared to be concubin- 
age and adultery. And as tlie Abolitionists protested against 
a system which necessarily produced such results they were 
called uijidds. When humane people everywhere, in seeing 
or reading the instances of cruelty 'j^racticed under the slave 
system, and especially under the Fugitive Slave Law. wept, 
and boiled over with holy indignation at the wrong; and when 
even Mohamedanism sneered in scorn at a religion which 
could enslave its own converts and sell them for nioney, not a 
tear moistened the cold eye. much less rolled down the stony 
cheek, of tlie (Mnircli ! V\^as not the Bible plenarilv inspired? 



C, ADDRESS TOOi.D ABOLITIONISTS. 

and is not Piiul, next to Jesus, our great exemplar? and did 
ho not return a runaway slave to his master? and is not the 
relation of master and slave as much a Bible institution ^^as 
that othusband and wife? 

1 now otter a remark to which I ask particular attention, so 
that 1 may not be misunderstood by friend or foe. If you ad- 
mit that Jesiis understood his own religion, and if he is per- 
mitted to define it, as he did in his famous interview Avith the 
lawyer, when he declared that it consisted solely in Love to 
(Jod and Love to Man, then the old Abolitionists were the 
most consistent and devoted Christians; and in themobbings, 
the tarring and feathering, the lynchingsand burnings they 
endured aVthe hands of the Church's agents and dupes their 
sufferings were those of Christian martyrs. They evinced 
their love of God by obeying his laws, and they evinced their 
love of Humanity by sacrificing reputation, wealth, ease, and 
everything men hold dear, in order to promote its interests. 
Jesus, in announcing his mission to his countrymen, declared 
that he hod come to preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal 
the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive,, to 
set at liberty those who were bruised, to inaugurate the year 
of jubilee. *This was precisely the object ofthe Abolitionists, 
too; for who were the poor, the broken-hearted, the captives, 
the bruised and the enslaved, if the millions of Southern ne- 
groes were not? And 3'et, when G-arrison declared the same 
Gospel the door of every meeting house in Boston was closed 
against him, and the dogs ofthe Church chased him as a crim- 
inal from pillar to post. Albert Kneeland, the so-called inji- 
del, was the only man in that city who offered his hall to this 
toUower of Jesus to expound anew the Gospel of good will to 
men ! If Jesus had suddenly made his second advent in Bos- 
ton at that time, have you any doubt that he would have made 
his headquarters at the "X/ftcT«/or" othce, and his place of 
preaching at Julian Hall ? Do you doubt that he would have 
launched the thunderbolts of his wratli and scorn, hissing hot. 
on the heads ofthe clergy, and branded the w-hole pro-slav- 
ery pack as a brotherhood of thieves? The Pharisees whom 
Christ denounced in his day w^ere models of consistency when 
compared to the teachers ofthe American church in 1830. 

If, however, you define ('hristianity to ^e the religion, not 
of Christ, but ofthe Church, which, as Mosheim. the ecclesias- 
tical historian, admits, soon after the death of Jesus became 
terril)ly corrupt; and w^iich has rolled down the past 18 cen- 
tui-ics like a mighty siiow-ball. gatliering up dogmas and vvr- 



ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 7 

emonies innumerable, antagonistic and puerile, then the Ab- 
olitionists ivere infidels; for so far from recognizing such an 
organization as a divine institution, and the authorized ex- 
pounder of the will of God, they regarded it as a synagogue 
of Satan, and a house of refuge for all transgressors of the 
law. Mr. Lecky, the distinguished historian^ of European 
morals, and who also had himself been a Clergyman of the 
Church of England, declares publicly, what every reader of 
history has observed privately, that'uo organization of men 
upon the face of the whole earth has shed so much innocent 
blood as the body calling itself the Church of Chiist. If this be 
so the idea is preposterous, and only accepted by the ignorant, 
the interested and the superstitious, that such an organization 
should be respected as an expounder of truth and morals. 
It has justified every crime forbidden by the ten command- 
ments, and its standard of morals has adapted itself to the 
sins of all the generations through which it has passed. 

But behold the revenges upon'one class, and the vindication 
of another class which Time is sure to make sooner or later. 
Although leaden -footed and of course slow in her gait, how 
inevitably she overtakes and punishes the guilty, and ap- 
plauds and justifies the righteous! The word '-abolitionist," 
which for 30 years was the synonym for everything that was 
wicked, and v^dien used contained the concentrated extract of 
all possible malignity and reproach, has entirely changed its 
signification, and has become a term of honor ! Do not un- 
derstand me to say that we are so weak as to be tickled with 
this empty compliment, and grateful for so small a favor. Be- 
lieving that principles never change, but are eternally true, 
I for one despise the vacillating public sentiment which con- 
verts the reproach of one generation into the glory ot the next. 
Iflciinnot see the humanity, I like the honesty "and dogged 
consistency of the man, who, when asked what he thought 
now of the conspicuous part he had taken in the mobbing of 
a distinguished Abolitionist who died last year, justified his 
conduct, and said that under Ihe same circumstances he would 
do the same thing over again. Such a m^n is at least free 
irom tJie hypocrisy and mendacity of those who were bitter 
pro-slavery men up to the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth min- 
ute, and then, when the clock of destiny struck twelve, sud- , 
denly turned round like the vane of^a weather-cock when the : 
v.'ind shifts, and became very .^«fi- slavery. These gentlemen 
and their present boastings remind me of the backwoodsman, 
who, wiien a bear came into liis house tor one of his children. 



8 ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 

"skedaddled," as they call it, up the ladder to the loft, leav- 
ing his wife to battle with the beast till she dispatched him, 
and then came down from his place of refuge and called in 
his neighbors to see the size of the bear that "we ami Molly 
killed r 

The Abolitionists always deserved well of their countrymen, 
and always were entitled to their own self-respect. Our old 
persecutors have changed. We have not changed. Even the 
Churchj now, when no slave breathes, or ever can breathe 
again under the American flag, has become abolitionized, and 
-most awkwardly endeavors to speak patronizingly of the old 
Abolitionists as'honest and good men. After the death of 
Garrison in June last, the Methodist clergy of Boston, uplift- 
ed with the assurance of their divine ''commission,'' that 
"whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and 
whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven," held 
a protracted debate of the question, whether with (larrison'w 
benevolent and irreproachable life before their eyes, they 
could, or could not, pronounce him a "Christian." Long time 
in even scale the battle hung between the nearly equal forces 
of the pro's and con's. At length it was decided, by a very 
close vote, that they could, graciously and condescendingly, 
concede to the notorious heretic the title of a Saint! I was 
informed at the tine that a clergynum in the town of Salem, 
when Marius Eobinson lay dead in his house, claimed from 
the pulpit that this distinguished Abolitionist Avas, and had al- 
ways been, a "Christian!" Marius Robinson! a man Avho 
never for forty yf^ars had darkened the doors of a church as a 
member or worshiper, and who was known by all his friends 
to repudiate wholesale, and with all his heart, the dogmas ot 
all the creeds of Christendom ! Need we wonder if l?obert 
(t. IngersoU himsell will yet be canonized ? 

And here let me say what an encouragement the success oi' 
the Anti-slavery reform is to all good men in the future to 
single out and fight against specific evils, instead of wasting 
strength and time by "a general indictment against sin in the 
abstract. The Church has, for hundreds of years, been oppos- 
ing sin by the latter method, and you see in the present 
wretched condition of society the proof of its folly. The Ab- 
olitionists made counts, or specialties, in their indictment, and 
hence their success. I say specific reform.s, for ideas are not 
born singly into this world; they come with a close relation- 
ship to others. Every great truth, especially if it be reform- 
atorv and revolutionary, has, if not an open, a secret relatio?!- 



ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 9 

ship to Other truths of vast importance, and the acceptance 
of the first prepares the way, sooner Or later, for the ace ep-; 
ance of the second. The absolute and inalienable right of ev- 
ery individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, 
makes eveiy person the equal of his fellows in the body poli- 
tic. But on a higher plane where he studies his relation .to 
the universe an intelligent enquirer finds his soul emancipa- 
ted from the thraldom of superstition. He is a free man/ 
whom the truth makes free. And this gives the reason why;' 
out of every thousand of the old Abolitionists who fought the 
battle of freedom against the united forces of the Church and 
8tate, nine hundred and ninety-nine are now Radicals in re- 
ligion. They properly valued their own freedom, and devo- 
ted themselves to the abolition of the personal bondage of the , 
slave, find Heaven rewarded them by delivering their own 
souls from the bondage of false religion. 

There is a tie that bound, and still binds, the hearts 
of the anti-slavery men of this couiitry together which other 
]nen know nothing of It grew out of mutual exposure to 
danger, mutual sacrifices, mutual confidence, and a sameness 
of opinion on the fundamental question of human rights. If 
I were not one of them myself I would have no hesitation in 
saying that history gives no account of a class of men so 
large, so intelligent, so pure and exalted in their morals, so 
fearless and self-sacrificing in duty, and of such high charac- 
ter in all respects, as the Abolitionists were. The movement 
called 5ut also a band of heroic women worthy of the fathers, 
sons and brothers they had, and whom 1 consider it an honor 
to have been associated with. The cause never would have 
succeeded Vvithout their sympathy and co-operation; for a 
man who is a man, and not the mere semblance of a man, is 
capable of any devoted act on the high field of duty and of 
daring if cheered by the approbation of noble and good wo- 
men. These glorious woman souls who allied themselves to 
the anti-slavery cause. were impelled in their self-denying 
course, not by the fear of an imaginary hell, nor by a belief 
in any of the dogmas of superstition, but solely by the dic- 
tates of an enlightened philanthropy. 

When the services of the Abolitionists in the cause of the 
slave terminated b}^ the adoption of the 15th Amendment of 
the Coiistitution of the United States^they dissolved their, or- 
ganizations and scattered into various callings. Some, but 
not maiiy, humiliated themselves by seeking a home in the 
verv church which had denounced them as infidels and wicked 



10 ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 

7iien for thirty years, and v.^Iiicli bad not tliori, niid has not to 
this da}- resciiKlcd trom the record the dhibolical pro-shivery 
]r!-iriU,)ies and aetioiis Avhicli compelled tliem to secede. But 
the vast jnnjoriiy of the leading men and women-, believinii: 
that a peoj^le spiritually enslaved cannot in the nature of 
things be long politicallj- free; and that independence of 
thought and character must precede and accompany tlie 
growth of liberty in the State, after seeing the shackles fall 
from the limbs of the slave, engaged in the still more difficult 
work of delivering their countrymen from spiritual bondage: 
and they now, to a great extent, leaven up v,dth their fiee 
prineipios and control the press and literature of the country. 
Bj-sijieridiijg knowledge among the people concerning their 
lelatiojis to the Supreme Being, and b}^ purifjdng the foun- 
tains of power, they are striving to secure for"^ Humanity at 
least one nation upon the face of the earth where the inhabi- 
tants shall not only be free from personal and politcal bond- 
age, but where the soul and the conscience shall be free also. 
Vie have succeeded during the first century of our existence as 
a people in destroying Kingcraft, and establishing the Eepi-b- 
lie. We are now inai-filuilling our forces to destroy its twin 
brothcir Prir:^! •■;'■:': . ■\.,\. us I have said, it is a n^ore difficult 
and th.ankless work tluin il was to break the chains from the 
limbs of four millions of slaves; for, Avhen we ];)oi!ited out the 
North Star in the heavens to a Southern slave, his instinctive 
love of liberty led him to In-eak away from his bondage, and 
run, at the risk of his life, to a land of freedom. But the crn- 
elt^^ of religious bigotry and superstition is seen in the fact 
that its victim is blLnd and cannot see the star that hangs 
over the land ofpromise, and even curses the man who would 
couch his eye; and he ingloriously hugs the chains vrhich 
bind his soul to the dead and gloomy past. 

In speaking as I do of the old Abolitionists there is one 
thing that must be confessed, for it was an anomaly in the 
character of that class of men. Irreproachable, and above ail 
suspicion as they were in their morals, intensely patriotic and 
unselfish, they were, for all this, 'daw breakers," and tliey 
practiced "stealth" and "deception." I have placed these 
three nouns in inverted commas implying that it was only so- 
called. The case was this: The "lavr" of the land had conver- 
ted four millions of the Amevicai! iteople into chattels person - 
fd T-' ' ■ 1 a eonstaiit disposition to runaway from theij- 
1^<''' ''o prevent this Congress enacted the Fugitive 

Slave l.aw whicli converted all the rest of us into legal dogs, 



ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITION ISTS. 11 

to chase down the absconding slave, and return him to his 
master. Tlie whole American Church, with the exception of 
two or three small sects, stood by and gave this "law" all the 
sanction of religion. The AbolitionistH, however, did not re- 
gard such statutes as worth}^ of the name of law; for "law," as 
the great Hooker had declared, "hath its seat in the bosom of 
God," and makes all human beings equal in its presence. 
The}', theretbre, invariably, and without the least hesitation, 
violated it, and took the consequences. The idea that a body 
of ignorant and bad men called a National Congress, or a 
8tate Legislature, should be authorized to pass a law binding 
tlie conscie7ice of a good man is preposterous; for what crime is 
There which has not been justitied b}^ "law," and what virtue 
is there that has not been punished as crime? And as it was 
iu)t to subserve' their own, but the interests of llumaBity, the 
Vbolitionists trampled with scorn upon all pro-slavery laws, 
and felt supreme contempt tor the Church that said they were 
binding. When the Government had become the mere tool 
of the Slave Power they dealt with its agents as we all would 
deal with an insane murderer — avoid getting ourselves into 
his clutches by deceiving him. On one occasion I sent my 
son with a two-horse wagon load of Virginia slaves, by a 
cross cut, to John Gordon's, near Salem, to avoid their pursu- 
ers who were searching for them along the Ohio River. I im- 
mediately made an assignment of my personal property, and 
a deed ot conveyance of my farm — all I owned in the world 
except my conscience — to a friend, who, in case I went to pri- 
son for thirty or fort}' years, as I was liable, under the re- 
quirements of the Fugitive Slave Law, would see that my 
family had bread. John Gordon's person and property were 
also -imperilled, for in the case of the United States against 
Mitchell for harboring a runaway slave — the very slave 
which I afterwards harbored, too, and sent to Canada; and in 
the Christiana riot case. Judge Grier, of the IT. S. Supreme 
Court, had rivalled Jeffrey in ignomy by his new doctrine of 
constructive treason, wdiereby, if a citizen gave a night's 
shelter or a crust ol bread to^ an absconding slave, knowing 
bimtobe such, he was Hable*to the heavv penalties of the 
law. 

Lo you ^voiider now at the haired which the Abolitionists 
bore the Church in those days? The Fugitive Slave Law 
^vas defended by the Church and clergy as a necessary aux- 
iliary to the divine institution of Slavery, and the conduct of 
Ihf Apostle Paul, in returning Onesimus to his slave master. 



12 ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 

Philemon, was every where held up as a Christian example 
for us to follow. Judge Grier, who originated the doctrine oi 
constructive treason in the cases cited, wdsa ruling Elder in 
the Presbyterian Church, and got his atrocious prin-ciples, and 
breathed his persecuting spirit, from the action of liis church 
declaring that Slavery was no bar to Christian Communion, 
Ail the other churches, either boldly:- and openly, or in a cow- 
ardly manner, took substantially the same g'round. Could 
v/e love and respect an organization which not only trampled 
down the rights of four millions of slaves, but upheld the Fu- 
gitive Slave I^aw, which made it a crime in w-sto give a cap 
of cold water and a piece of bread to a famishing fugitive? 
There are, I admit, and always have been, good men "in the 
ministiy and membership of the Christian Church, but as an 
organization — a corporation — reaching through many years 
of history, every intelligent man will agreee with Mr. Lecky, 
for he cannot help it, that there is no association of men on 
earth so blackened with crime as is the Christian Church ! I 
can find no words in the English language strong enough to 
expressmy fflbhorrence and detestation of that organize 'Jon 
for the t^-eason to God and Humanity which she practiced 
during the whole of the anti-slavery struggle. She taught 
the South, by the authority of , the Old Testament and the 
New, that Slaverj'- was as divine an institution as the family. 
The South believed her doctrine, and to preserve her sacred 
"institution" concocted the rebellion of 1861, which cost this 
nation more than a million of the lives of its young men, and 
thousands of millions of dollars ! I believe that every drop of 
blood shed in our late civil war lies to-day at the door of the 
Church. The English Cardinal Newman, after liis return 
fromEome a few months since, on a deli})erate outlook at the 
situation, gave it as his opinion, in a speech to his friends, 
that, by the close of this century, '-infidelity," as he calls it, 
unless God prevents it by miracle, Avill have overrun and 
supplanted the Church all over nominal Christendom. If he 
be a true prophet the future historian of the A merican Church 
will, I think, date its decline at J:hat point where her treason 
to the cause ofhuman liberty forfeited and lost the confidence 
of the American people. When she openly and deliberately 
allied herself with the Slaveholders, and justified a system 
which outraged all justice and mercy it wos a clear case o^felo 
de se. Corporations die slowly, but a wound in the vitals is, 
sooner or later, fatal. She has clearh' reached the culmina- 
tion of her influence as an oro-anization: and her treachem- to 



ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 13 

th'f^ slave, together with the "inroads of science, must prove 
her ultimate downmll. Sensible of the fact, though hardly 
able to understand it, she is putting forth herculean efforts, 
by her wealth and her organized numbers, to recover her lost 
ground; but all the spasmodic signs of life we see in revivals 
of religion are only like the galvanic phenomena j^i'oduccd 
upon a corpse. In justifying the system of slavery she open- 
ed upon society tlie floodgates of all the crimes and vices 
which composed the system; and these, like a boomerang, 
have struck back, and fatally polluted her own membership. 
The doctrine of eternal hell fire, which is the key stone of her 
theology, and the only reason for her existence as a Church 
at all, has fallen out, and all the correlative dogmas must 
share its fate. 

But while all this is true let no man be fool enough to un- 
derrate the power she still wields, and the tremendous efforts 
she vv'ill yet make to regain and maintain her authority over 
the people. She is the Church militant, and in all her sects 
as admirably organized with quartermaster and commissary 
de])artments, as well disciplined in the strategy of war, and 
as ably commanded in all her battallions and regiments as the 
German army was when it subjugated Fiumce at Sedan. She 
keeps the men of Science under cow threatening to oust them 
from place and po])ularity if they dare to announce exo^mca//?/ 
those great truths they have discovered, and which, if the 
people understood them, would undermine their faith in the 
creeds of theology. Hence the stammering and inarticulate 
signs and sounds made by these so-called Interpreters of Na- 
ture. She keeps the politicians in awe, dictating positive 
legislation to them by which she can wreak her vengeance 
on those who den}' her claims to be a divine institution vested 
with authority in human affairs; and she disallows the repeal 
of obnoxious and unconstitutional Sabbath laws by which she 
can annoy the citizens and abridge their liberties. She is at 
this moment unifying and marshalling her forces for a grand 
death struggle wi*^tli the Spirit of the Nineteenth Century, 
which, if not prepared for, and courageously met, may send 
many a noble victim to prison. She is elated with hope of 
success by the humiliating fact that her opponents, the Eadi- 
cals, refusing to be taught by her example, are all unarmed, 
unorganized, and disintegrated — cursed by the spirit of a 
proud, conceited and excessive individualism which stupidly 
imagines that a mob, if it have good intentions, can stand be- 
fore veteran soldiers executing a plan of attack! Still, with 



14 ■ ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 

all my hostility to the impudent assumptions of the Church, 
I would not disturb one stone in the walls of any of her 8(S0 
millions of dollars worth of untaxed property. When Cardi- 
nal >^ewman's prediction is fulfilled these same churches, now 
so sparsel}' occupied by uninterested hearers, will swarm to 
listen to the new apostles as they will stand in these old pul- 
pits to expound the grand truths of Natural Heligion. Old 
things will have passed away, and behold all thing^ will have 
become new. 

Yv^hen Garrison died last June some colored men of Pitts- 
burg thought they were paying a groat tribute of praise to 
his name hy saying that next to Lincoln the colored people of 
this country owed to Garrison a heavier debt of gratitude 
than to any other man! Why, the truth is that had there 
never been a Garrison there never would have been a Lin- 
coln ! It was Garrison and his associates, who, by educating 
the people up to an anti-slavery standard, made Lincoln pos- 
sible. Lincfdn was elected President on a platform which 
recognized the legal right and constitutionality of Slavery, 
and only o])})osed its introduction into the Territories of ihv 
United States. His inaugural address had the same tone. 
He felt it his constitutional duty to enforce the Fugitive 
Slave Law, and allowed George -Cxordon, the President of 
Iberia College, to be sent to prison where he took his death, 
for harboring and protecting one of his students who was 
charged with being a runaway slave. Lincoln, when he took 
the oath of office, did not understand the subject of Slavery at 
all. Ke had to be put into the primary school to learn the 
a, b, c, of abolitionism. To be sure, he learned remarkably 
fast, so that, by 12 o'clock on the night of December 31, 1802, 
he was able to spell a word of five syllables. It was the glo- 
rious word E-man-ci-pa-tion ! Four millions of slaves heard 
the word, and leaped from their chains into freedom! No 
man reveres the name of Lincoln more than I do. His great- 
ness, like that of Washington, consisted in his goodness, and 
his sense of duty. But I cannot, at my time oif life, and in 
the presence of this audience, stand up here and tell lies. The 
business of lying I leave to those unscrupulous adepts in the 
art, the Reverend Clark Braden and the Right Reverend 
Bishop Haven, who have the stupendous impudence and 
brazen facedness to declare to audiences gullible enough to 
believe it, that it was the American Church that abolished 
American Slavery! • The act which immortalized Lincoln's 
name as an Emancipator was backed up and sustained by 



ADUKESS TO OLD ABOLlTJONISTsi. 15 

public Bentiment, and tl.is public sentiment was manufactur- 
ed out Of the raw material by the labors of the Abolitionists, 
which ran through a course of thirty years preceding the 
event \\ hen the will of the nation had been brought into 
accord witn the eternal principles of justice it was c5isy al- 
txiough It was glorious, for the President, as spokesman ot the 
people, to express that will in the Act of Emancipation*. All 
honor to Lincoln, and let his name stand forever amonff 
those of the benefactors of mankind! But equal hoiur to 
that band of fearless Apostles, who for long and weai-isome 
years went out into the highways and hedges, and tau^^ht the 
people ofthis country till they believed it, the subliine doc- 
trine that it is alwaj's safe to do right ! 

I must now express an opinion the correctness' of which' 
some will doubt. It is. that if the Abolitionists had been con- 
suited after the rebellion was crushed, as to the wisest dispo- 
sitioii to be made of the emancipated slaves and their late 
masters, the South would have escaped the bloodshed, debt, 
and other forms of damnation consequent upon military and 
carpetbag rule; and the Jiepublican party, which, with laro-e 
majorities, had carried the nation safely through the war, 
would not have lost the confidence of its members and dwin- 
dled into a minority. The Abolitionists were not only Proph- 
ets denouncing wrongs, but they were Statesmen understand- 
ing the causes and consequences of things. Thev had studied 
the subject of Slavery, and understood it' better than any oth- 
er class of our citizens; and they had studied the subject of 
liberty also. It is curious to read the anti-slavery speeches 
made in Congress after the gag had been taken out of the 
mouthsof the members. In their statistics, history, argu- 
nients, and all that gave them value, they were a mere repeti- 
tion of the lectures of the Abolitionists. Our libraries and 
literature were the arsenals Avhere they procured their most 
available weapons. And as Congress had the ear of the peo- 
ple to a greater extent than we had we reioiced that through 
thai body our ideas could go forth on their mission of enlight- 
enment. 

The condition of things was this: The rebels had forfeited 
iheir lives, their liberty, and their property by their surren- 
der at Appomatox, and lay at the mercy of the Government. 
I he negroes had become emancipated. The question for a 
statesman to solve was, what shall b^ done Avith these results 
of the rebellion ? Xo anti-slavery lecturer during the thirty 
years discussion ever dreamed of demanding for the slave, in , 



16 AJ>nKESS TO OLT> AHOLTTIONISTS. 

the first instance, more than personal freedom, the means of 
education, and the opportunity to own land. Knowing that 
suffrage was a burden of responsibility as well as a right, the 
Abolitionists never would have recommended the imposition 
of this burden on the newl^'-made freedmen whose manhood 
/had been weakened by a century and more of slavery. They 
I would^have made suffrage the reward of scholarship and 
■'thrift. They would have taken the gi'ound that after a civil 
War where the belligerents must hereafter dwell together on 
/the sume soil and under the same flag; and when the cause of 
!the war is no longe/ in existence, tlie sooner the hatchet can 
*be buried out of sight the better. They would not have dis- 
franchised the whites and enfranchised the blacks, thus hu- 
miliating the pride of the old masters, and putting the reins 
of government, in several States, into the hands of blind and 
deaf charioteers, or greedy and selfish carpet-baggers, who 
would be sure to drive to destruction. 

But the class of politicians who never see further than the 
present, and nevei know, nor care, for anything but the suc- 
cess of their own party, and mahy of whom had been m^re 
camp-followers, both in the moral and military struggle, un- 
dertook the management of afi^iiirs in the South, and brought 
about that deluge of evils from which we are only now begin- 
ning to emerge. They did not see that the cancer of slavery 
had been forming on the breast of the body politic for two 
hundred years, sendtng down its poisonous roots into all the 
parts of the system, ar\d that when the heroic stroke of Lin- 
coln's scalpel had cut it out it needed the most careful treat- 
ment afterwards so that the patient did not bleed to death. 
/ But quackery in Statesmanship was the order of the day. 
The skillful and scientific treatment of the case, which the 
A.I)olitionists would have prescribed, was not adopted; and as 
they carried their 6?Y7.9.9iii the shape of a breastplate on their 
bosoms while the politician carried his in his face, their coun- 
sel was not sought, and they Avent into retiracy. Under the 
management of party politicians the Southern States have 
nearly all become more or less bankrupt, and must repudiate 
the payment of their debts; and the hate of the J^orth engen- 
dered by the rebellion has not been abated. The very act of 
the Republicans in enfranchising the blacks for pai'ty pur- 
poses has given the South a larger representation in Congress 
than she had in Slavery times, and those States in which the 
blacks have the majority now send Democratic representa- 
tives to Congress. 



ADDRESS TO OLD ABOM J fONlSTS. . 17 

In taking a retrospective view as 1 have of the long strug- 
gle in which the Abolitionists were brought into such danger- 
ous prominence some persons, not well inibi-med, may think 
that I have been harsh in my censure of the Church tor the 
part she took against us, and in behalf of the abominations of 
iSlavery. But 1 stand here to-day as an attorney for the 
speechless dead to defend their characters from the ignominy 
heaped upon them during a course of thirt}' years by their 
fellow citizens. Some of them in that holy war died in prison; 
some were branded; manj^ were mobbed. They all died un- 
der a cloud of reproach, seeing only with the eye of faith the 
dawn of that day which we see in its meridian glory ! In the 
persecutions which followed them to the grave it was the 
Church which led the way, and cried Steboy ! to the dogs: 
and no dogs have such shai'p teeth and so ferocious a spirit as 
those which the Church breeds in her kennels! I would be 
faithless to our compati-iots in the grave, if, on such an occa- 
sion as the present, 1 did not defend them before this genera- 
tion from the assaults which their enemies made upon their 
characters und persons, and which have never been confessed 
nor apologized lor to this moment ! 

When Judge Sewall, of Massachusetts, who, as the organ of 
the law in 1G76, had taken so active a part in putting inno- 
cent women to death on the charge of being witches, got his 
e_yesopen to see that he had been doing wrong, he posted a 
hand bill on the walls of the Old South Church at Boston, 
and standing before the whole congregation, confessed, and 
bewailed his sin, asking in suppliant tones and terms the for- 
giveness of both God and man ! But among the thousands 
and tens of thousands of our pro slavery clergy not one sin- 
gle soul has had the manliness to stand up and confess with 
tearsof repentance, that he or his church did wrong by the 
support they gave to the colossal system of crime known as 
American slaver}^ And the reason is obvious. These men 
all claim to be Ambassadors of Jesus Christ, the mouth-pieces 
of Almighty God, holding a divine commission to open and 
shut the doors of the kingdom of heaven to all comers. Shall 
such dignitaries confess their faults to non-commissioned hu- 
nijjwf beings? Shall the Ambassadors who treat with rebels 
confess to the rebels themselves that they were either mista- 
1^ in their opinions, or criminal in their actions? Judge Sew- 
iffl was only an unordained layman. Ko Bishop's, nor any 
^ther ministerial hands were ever laid upon his head com- 
Inunicating to him the odor of sanctity, as well as the power 



18 ADDRESS TO OLD ABOLITIONISTS. 

to forgive sins. Eat our clergy pretend to be commissioned 
plenipotentiaries from the Court of Heaven, and to all intents 
and purposes as infallible as the Pope of Rome. Hence, those 
of them wlio are too honest and shame-faced to claim that ''me 
and Molly killed the bear" are nevcitlvcless too proud to ad- 
mit that in the support of Slavery they did wrong. The grave 
cannot equal tlicm in the dead silence they observe in reirard' 
to this matter; for while they are willing to ])rostrate them- 
selves bcfoie God every Sunday and acknowledge themselves 
to be miserable sinners, from the crown of the h-ead to the 
sole of the feet a mass of putrefying sores, they have no con- 
fession to make to humanity at large. For the hardest word 
in thcAvorldfor a priest to utter to his fellow men h-peccavi." 

I speak also in vindication of the Old Abolitionists who 
still remain, and who, unexpectedly, have lived to see the day 
when no slave clanks hi^5 chains in all the land; and when our 
fellow xritizens are compelled to acknowledge that during the 
anti-slaverj' struggle we were right and they were wrong. We 
pardon our old enemies, for the}' were ignoi-ant and prejudic- 
ed; but we extend no pardon to the Church, which, throngh 
her 5<>,000 pulpits, misled the peoj^le and filled their hearts 
with hate against us. and made them believe that Slavery was 
a divine institution. We leave her to the just retribuiions of 
Time, for she committed the sin that is unpardonable and fatal. 

And now, my friends, the occasion has come for us, before 
we depart for the pale realms of shade where each shall take 
his chamber in the silent halls of death, to grasp each other 
by the hand, and say the vx'ord farewell ! AVc shall die with- 
out fear, and without self-reproach, for we endeavored to act 
well our parts on the theatre of life, whether our duties were 
conspicuous or more humble. xV new generation has come upon 
the stage asking us to vacate our places, and we will soon make 
onr exit and be seen no more. This is the last meeting of the 
kind we shall ever hold. J^et us adjourn it sine die, with mu- 
tual congratulations, and mutual farewells! 




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